Surface-to-mountaintop transport characterised by radon observations at the Jungfraujoch
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Date
2014-12-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
European Geosciences Union
Abstract
Atmospheric composition measurements at Jungfraujoch are affected intermittently by boundary-layer air which is brought to the station by processes including thermally driven (anabatic) mountain winds. Using observations of radon-222, and a new objective analysis method, we quantify the land-surface influence at Jungfraujoch hour by hour and detect the presence of anabatic winds on a daily basis. During 2010–2011, anabatic winds occurred on 40% of days, but only from April to September. Anabatic wind days were associated with warmer air temperatures over a large fraction of Europe and with a shift in air-mass properties, even when comparing days with a similar mean radon concentration. Excluding days with anabatic winds, however, did not lead to a better definition of the unperturbed aerosol background than a definition based on radon alone. This implies that a radon threshold reliably excludes local influences from both anabatic and non-anabatic vertical-transport processes. © Author(s),2014.
Description
Keywords
Atmospherics, Radon 222, Wind, Europe, Aerosols, Measuring methods
Citation
Griffiths, A. D., Conen, F., Weingartner, E., Zimmermann, L., Chambers, S. D., Williams, A. G., & Steinbacher, M. (2014). Surface-to-mountaintop transport characterised by radon observations at the Jungfraujoch. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 14(23), 12763-12779. doi:10.5194/acp-14-12763-2014